Played

February 13, 2006
     The failure to lead in this country now includes all the major fields of enterprise and resolves into a general and total failure of authority that threatens to drag us into darkness. Leaders in politics, business, the news media, science, medicine, education, and the organized religions have all failed to prepare the public for the hardships that will attend a global energy crisis supercharged by climate change, disorder in the financial markets, and almost certainly more war.

      President Bush's failure to lead was obvious in his state of the union speech, and in actions that followed -- such as signing on with the continued starvation of Amtrak last week. If Mr. Bush doesn't like that crypto-private company, he could start an initiative of his own to reform and reorganize the railroad system we desperately need. So too, by the way, could Hillary Clinton or John Kerry, or any other putative Democratic leader. But they're too busy grubbing around the contribution circuits to fatten their campaign war chests.

      The major news media's failure is near total, especially at the highest level of the New York Times, which gives more ink to narcissistic blather about gender identity than to the issue of how industrial civilization is going to carry on without its primary resources. The cable news networks have sunk into such mires of craven whorishness that they don't even pretend to broadcast news between eight o'clock and midnight anymore, just tabloid crime spectacles and celebutante melodramas. The Wall Street Journal has resigned from reality in order to DJ the financial sector's dangerous game of musical chairs.

     I haven't heard one college president address the question of how we are going to reform education when it ceases to be a mass consumer activity and the giant campuses of the land-grant diploma mills enter their own waiting crisis of scale.

     Where are the doctors speaking out about the nightmarish swindle that corporate medicine has become? The most conspicuous public doctor, Senate majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, is under investigation precisely for working one angle of that swindle -- insider trading of medical services stock. Isn't it bad enough that hardworking people have to face cancer and mutilating injuries from auto accidents without also shoving them into personal bankruptcy?

      Business leadership in America has become nothing less than a transparent wholesale shift of wealth by irresponsible boards of directors from the pension funds of longtime employees to the pockets of grifting CEOs -- or the outright looting of supersized enterprises such as Enron. Here's an interesting question-of-the-day for those of you who ponder over business matters: how does a person really improve his standard of living after the first $10 million? Give that some thought, because a few years hence a furious public is going to be asking that very question of fattened corporate executives as they prepare to roast them on spits over the flames of discarded automobile tires.

      Where are the clergymen in America who are willing to tell their congregations that casino gambling is a moral fiasco and that the worship of unearned riches is an offense in the sight of God?

      Where are the scientists who will inform the public and its political leaders that we really are in trouble with oil and natural gas, that markets do not magically deliver rescue remedies on demand, that technology and energy are not interchangeable and mutually substitutable, and that our nation is about five years from falling into a condition of energy starvation that will bring down all our complex systems of daily life?

     When the public finally discovers how they have been let down or played by these leaders, there will be a convulsion more severe than the one that tore this country apart in 1861.
      

Comments

[Pete Deer]

Comrade Kunstler;
Yes, where indeed is the leadership of our country when we need them. They are busy on vacation at their ranch/estate in Crawford, or shooting attorneys with birdshot, or croaking out threats to Syria and Iran, simultaneously espousing Freedom and Liberty while plotting to sieze and hold foreign oil feeds to keep the American Way of Life a going concern, regardless of the global consequences. We want what we want, and we take what we want. I wish it was not the case. I wish this exploitive way of looking at the planet by so many of our species had evolved to a higher level of community building and sustainability. Locally, I have politicians and pundits pushing Biofuels as the new snake oil, selling a vision of the world to the local rubes that "We can grow all the gas we need, why it's just so easy."
Perhaps I could sell them a bridge or two as well...

Subkommander Dred

[Grant]

I listened to you with great interest on the Art Bell (Coast To CaostAM) show in May 2005. You said then that we would be in the s*$# in 3 years (May 2008). Now, in this post it's 5 years off? Seems like the end of life as we know it is 5 years away...and always will be. You make sense and I'd like to believe you but the date is ALWAYS 3 to 5 years out, it's ever moving. People have bben screaming WOLF in my ear every since 1980. It's just hard to take seriously any more.

[bud4wiser]

JK,

Well, there was this "one guy".
His name was Ralph Nader......
http://www.ralphnadersgoodfight.com/

All your good intentions and $2.40 will get you a cup of java at Star$.

Hey, if I wanted a "howl at the moon" essay, I would have written it myself......

[nostalgia]

Hello,
is it just me, or is it getting harder for Kunstler to accept the fact that because a fairly small part of humanity seems to be on the verge of collapse, we all need to be trembling at the end of what many of us think was a catastrophe spanning decades? Or that we are living in the world he seems to fear as still coming?

Maybe the fact that the predicted (and yes, I have believed for 20 years, predictable - notice the time scale there) collapse of America's suburban consumer nightmare isn't happening has something to do with it?

But really - just because he doesn't see something like Christian oposition to gambling in the press doesn't mean it doesn't exist, for example, even allowing for hypocrites like Pat Robertson. (And hypocrisy is a strangely Christian vice, I might add, enraging Jesus as it did.) How racist was the America depicted in the Hollywod and mass media of 1953? Why keep citing mass media as being anything but a source of delusion?

I still think Kunstler is a man living with the major disappointment of not having been proved correct yet, and maybe even with a touch of fear that he will not be proved correct before he dies.

[Grant]

I apologize for the typos and did mean to say "ever since 1980"

[A Tykhyy]

--
Leaders ... have all failed to prepare the public for the hardships
--
Jim, give me a break. Show me who, of average people, wants to hear the "prepare for hardships" from anyone. They've worked really hard, even if their labour was pointless in the end, and now they must face the thought that all that labour was in vain and they've ruined their lives and the lives of their children in the process. It requires great courage and presense of mind (mettle was the word) or intolerable stress to accept such a fact and truly act on it. Do you wonder most people reject notions predicting future hardship on a subconscious level? They aren't going to hear the message, and of those that do hear it most will turn on the messenger in a fit of bartender rage.

[Pete]

I say bring the fiasco on!

Has anyone read this article by Krassimir Petrov yet?

http://www.energybulletin.net/12125.html

[Philski]

Well, it ain't easy writing a weekly blog describing a slo mo train wreck. Chances are you will either bore your audience to death documenting every little clue as to the feared result of our humanity or resort to blanket observations like this last one that prompts derision from your supporters.
I for one, will continue to listen to JHK cause he says it all so well...

[Pete]

Tykhyy

The man's name is Freud. The book is called The Future of an Illusion. I suggest reading a copy.

We all work for civilization, we are the insane ones.

[erlking]

A Tykhyy--

You hit the nail on the head when you said, "It requires great courage and presense of mind (mettle was the word) or intolerable stress to accept such a fact and truly act on it." Isn't this part of what JHK has called in other places the "psychology of prior investment."

Freud pointed out long ago that people don't change until the pain of not changing outweighs the fear of the change. Now granted, he was talking about bourgeois Viennese neurotics and not a total transformation of industrial society, but it's a valid point.

Anyway, if it's true that we get the leadership we deserve, well, then arrogant, feckless, hubristic knuckleheads will be prancing across the political stage for some time to come.

[carlostheobscure]

Its amazing to me that so many people can be derisive of JK's criticism here--it serves a different purpose than that of "prediction".

People in the rich part of the world are in a consensus trance about the long-term viability of our living arrangements.

Oxygen in. CO2 out. How large would a herd of bison have to be to equal the amount of respiration of industrial civilization? We're cooking the atmosphere for our comfort. That's craven any way you look at it.

We're in the deep ruts of fate. Kunstler's screeching like an Old Testament prophet because he's hoping that in this way he can help move this country on a different course. Of course its uncomfortable to hear. The ugly truth always is.

[One Eye Open]

Jimmy,

Relax. With Bird flu right around the bend we'll be stacking "em 10 high in no time. The tire fires you mention will be used to start funeral pyres. With half the people gone energy will last twice as long.

[Kevin]

Long time reader of this site...never felt compelled to write before.

I had a friend who had alcohol problems and would always drive drunk in high school. We used to figure he would end up getting in a major wreck by age 20. He didn't. That happened when he was 27.

The same with Mr. Kunstler's predictions...the signs are there to anyone who is paying attention, but when they happen is hard to tell.

On that note...I thought this weeks article regarding a lack of leadership was an interesting one. The problem is, there is no checks and balances in place. As for national issues, media should be that check and balance. As stated in the article, media is just another show. The top news stories on the news this morning...Olympic results and a record snowstorm in New York City. Fluff pieces. The watchdog to the poor leadership is not there. Case in point...the Amtrak info Mr. Kunstler talks about, never knew it was being cut back until I read this article today.

[Mauricio Babilonia]

Pete asks:

"Has anyone read this article by Krassimir Petrov yet?"

http://www.energybulletin.net/12125.html

I reply:

Yes, it's excellent. Required reading!

[HappyHappyJoyJoy]

erlking, A Tykhyy,
Agree with your points about our feckless leadership.

When I discovered peak oil last summer, I spent 2 weeks reading about PO nonstop for 15 hours a day. I came away with a profound sense of anxiety. A clusterfuck of unimagineable proportions was going to blow my "future" skyhigh. I am 51, an artist and musician. I have a 16 year old son. Depression set in. You begin to look at present day circumstance as a dream world that persists until the spell is shattered.
Speaking of which, I attended an art opening in a gallery that promotes vinyl urban characters derived from japanese anime. I was musing with a sociologist friend that the gallery used to be a mill house making fabric, then a municians factory, office space, and now a gallery filled with vinyl dolls made in china. What's the future for this space? Perhaps a recycling depot, a salvage store, a local manufacturing factory or an agricultural depot.
I feel like Nostradomus on bad acid..I like peak civilization (although not it's political, economic and social leadership)...I want to keep my PEAK CIVILIZATION! But I am resigned to the fact that our furless simian alphas are racing down the olduvai.

[drywhitetoast]

Grant-

I've only been peak-oil aware for a year now, and I've already grown tired of some of the 'collapse is right around this next bend... ok wait, this next one... this next one is it for sure, etc., etc.' type of thinking. But even with the desire for instant gratification, we can't deny that the temperature is rising slowly, the screws are tightening, and it's getting a bit tense. Can you honestly say we are in the same situation as we were circa 1980 with regards to energy? Just because the wolves aren't at the door yet doesn't mean we should shut our eyes & ears to the subtle advances they make toward us every day.

[Edgar Cave Urbanus]

"I know not why any one but a school-boy in his declamation should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another. [...] A people, who while they were poor robbed mankind; and as soon as they became rich, robbed one another." Samuel Johnson

Just substitute America for "Commonwealth of Rome," and see what comes up. So what if JK is off by a few years. The fact is that our very system of civilization is beggining to wobble, and when it tips, it will begin to crack, then crumble. We are going to see it. The hand writing is on the wall, and most of us are like deer in the head lights. Five or ten years? Not very long, especially if your 15 today!

[jorge]

Hi:

Ever since the Millerites gathered on that hilltop in 1843 prophets of doom have repeatedly announced the end is nigh. They have been unfailingly wrong about their predictions. The world passes the millenial jump with nary a peep, and historians are still debating if the Y2K was for real or simply one of the largest swindles in the story of mankind. And so on and so forth.

The world keeps on spinning on its axis, babies are born, and everybody is busy with his or her own dreams, concerns, aspirations, and the myriad little personal tragedies that make life what it is. We make do, muddle through another day, kiss the kids and make quicky love to the old lady, go to sleep. Rinse, wash, and repeat.

It's very easy to ignore the signs of things going the wrong way. It's hard to focus on slow change and incremental hardship because humans adapt marvelously to difficult situations. People rapidly reestablish a new baseline for daily activities. There was lovemaking and babies born in Leningrad and Stalingrad; there were songs and poetry written in the murdering trenches of World War I.

It's inbred in our gens. Only superb adaptability allowed this species to populate and thrive in virtually every single ecosystem on the planet, a feat of adaptability only matched by a few bugs and lower order mammals.

The real questions that should be asked are not a date, or the shape of bad things to come, or who is going to end up bombing who. Important as those are, they are also incidental to the real big questions:

--Is our monetary system sustainable?

--Is our resource consumption of basic raw materials and commodities sustainable, i.e., is loss of topsoil, acquifer water, pollution rates, cultivable land, environmental destruction, sustainable?

--Is the present uneven distribution of wealth, energy, and healthcare around the world sustainable?

--Is our disproportionate tax on the rest of the planet sustainable in its many forms: resource consumption, energy consumption, monetary policy, current account deficit, etc?

Answers to those questions will not produce a date, a manner, or chain of events predicting the future. They will, however, produce the undeniable picture of long-term collapse of the system.

Ceteris paribus, the above elements spell a progressive decline of standards of living all around the world. This process is already happening. The process is uneven, of course. Standards of living in parts of China, parts of India, and parts of the FSU are rising under the impetus of globalized economies and technological wherewithal. Worldwide aggregation of data belie the appearance of rising prosperity. Africa is probably the most dramatic case, but it's far from being alone: Latin America has lost ground over the past two decades, Asia as a whole is retreating under the pressure of growing populations that new markets and jobs cannot possibly accommodate. The United States leads the post-industrial world in its economic decline but is not declining alone as falling salaries in the US and high persistent unemployment in Europe attest.

For all the appearance of wealth, individual humans are in average poorer now than they were 20 years ago. They are poorer in terms of income, poorer in terms of energy consumption available per capita (a natural function of explosive population growth versus limited growth in energy available), and poorer in terms of environmental depletion: Amazon brutal and unabated deforestation, Southeast Asia brutal and unabated deforestation, desertification in Western and Northern China, expansion of the Sahel region into larger and larger areas of sub-Saharan Africa, etc.

The prophets of doom have been wrong. No question about this. Their message has drowned the real urgent implications of long-term human and environmental degradation. This has been the case ever since the Club of Rome's original report was prostituted and defaced by freemarket acolytes. See, they scream, nothing's happened this year, or the next. Cry wolf, is what they've done, the proclaim triumphantly. And this of course resonates with the uninformed and the distracted.

It also masks the larger and broader time horizons for ecological and human collapse. Responsible and serious spokes persons have posited that this would not happen tomorrow, or the day after. They have consistently indicated that the process will happen as a natural result of pressure on the biosphere by a species requiring ever increasing amounts of energy and resources. They have also said that the path to collapse will first be marked by increased instability of all types: political, social, economic, military. They did correctly predicted decades ago the all too common spectable of displaced populations, famine affecting ever growing populations, and migratory pressures from the Third World on the First.

Look out your windows and see if this is happening or not. Look at the Southwest here in this country, and the reaction from all Latin countries to the proposed wall: the Third World is pretty much demanding its right to export its misery into this country. Ask the Moroccan soldiers who moved down dozens of sub-Saharan migrants at the barbed-wire borders of Ceuta and Melilla if the Third World isn't demanding its right to sit at the still abundant table of riches of Europe if the poor of the Earth aren't violently asserting their right to live as human beings.

It could well be that a discontinuity erases this long-drawn, painful process: Ghawar might suddenly go into terminal downturn next year, or nuclear war could start with a bunker-busting tacnuc under an Iranian research center next month. Those discontinuities are to be expected.

But, in the long run, the writing is on the wall. Even without the discrete catastrophe or seminal event, humankind seems to be posed for disaster. We will adapt, of course: deeper artesian wells will be dug, new genetically modified seeds will come to resist draught and pests, humans in the rich world will learn to live with less, and less, and less, and new armies will be raised to kick back the hungry masses surging from the South. When? 10 years? 20 years? Enough for me to spend my 401 (k).

"Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."

'The Hollow Men' (T.S. Elliot)

Good day.

[Nicholas Paredes]

Too bad the free market mentality isn't applied to air transport, or for that matter auto transportation systems. If Amtrack played on a level field it might seem more attractive. What do you suppose a ticket from Boston to NY would cost without subsidies?

[Dave]

That was a very hard hitting post ! One Great line after the other. It really moved me and got me thinking about the failures of damn near every part of our society to deal with reality as it presents on the energy front and so on every other front. I just don't know what to do to wake the sleepers up and find myself looked upon distrustfully or as nut. So I'm simply going to keep my deck chair, order a new round for the gang and simply go down with the ship. Realistically what else can one do in the face of total panic that is soon to ensue when the modern world begins to fade from view and the smoke is smelled and the theater doors all locked ?

[Barry]

A post of extra-ordinary excellence, Jorge. Kudos!

[One Eye Open]

Kevin,

You are right about the press but I have mixed feelings about the reasons behind the ineffectiveness of the press. In the past, when there were only the big three tv broadcasters, a person could only go to those 3 places for their news. The good thing about that was that you had more resources behind each channel to put together the nightly news. There was also more of a communal feeling for news viewers, knowing that their co-workers, friends, etc. had viewed the same broadcast and could thus discuss the merits of a given story.

I saw Jack Valenti on tv this am and he made an interesting comment regarding the movie business. He said that there is currently around 700 movies being made per year in Hollywood. He said that there is not enough talent to make that many movies every year. When you look at the product that comes out of Hollywood, Valenti is right. The same can be said of broadcast news. It has been so fractionalized that the product is more watered down than ever. This is the bad news.

The good news is that with the advent of the internet a person has the opportunity to do a complete end-run around the traditional broadcast news services. By the time Brian Williams (or whomever) plants themself in front of a camera at days end, those who have taken the time, already know every last thing that is about to come out of his head.

In the past, those with access to the information called the tunes. A news organization with an axe to grind (and there are plenty of examples of this occuring) could ruin a person or institution because the means of cross checking their story was much more difficult. The old saying that, "A rumor can run half way around the world while the truth is still putting its pants on." was and is quite true. In the past a MSM story could ruin an individual before the "truth" could put its pants on. That is not as easy to do in the age of the internet.

Why do stories of substance so rarely find their way to air time? I think a big part of the problem is the fact that the world suffers from a pandemic case of attention deficit syndrome. We walk around with ipods engaged, while twiddling our thumbs over the latest pocket game, waiting for our cell phones to ring. We're plugged into things that isolate us from each other and yet want to carry the means of instant communication on our hips. Randomly follow behind someone on a cell phone and listen to their conversation. "What are you doing? Oh, nothing. I'm headed over that way. Oh, look at those cool pants? What? I just saw some cool pants. She's going too? No way."

It's multi-tasking. 24/7. But what do the "tasks" really add up too? We're plugged in alright. Plugged in to the innaneness of instant gratification and a never silent soundtrack that ensures that ideas emerging from the sweet noise of silence are less and less likely to occur.

[Barry]

" . . . the sweet noise of silence . . . " ahhhhh. Been quite awhile since I've enjoyed that.

[jorge]

Barry:

Ole T.S. kicks ass, that's for sure.

Cheers,

[Barry]

You're not doing too badly, yourself, counselor . . . nice work. :-)